Last week, I had the chance to participate in a bar camp presented by Frankie Abralind at the Service experience camp.
Frankie is a design thinking consultant with an artistic mindset, a professor at the University of Maryland and inventor of BrainSpin.
In the given hour session, we were asked to form groups, given instructions and played!
It was a good way to break the ice, since all of us came from different places and had different backgrounds.
The rules were as follows:
Turn on the timer on your phone, randomly pick one card and write separately all the words that come to your mind, then share the results:
For each unique answer you get one point, for common words you get nothing and discard your word.
The next game was as follows: in a group of six, subdivide the group into 2, so you basically end up playing individually, and in two groups.
It was quite interesting because my team had people from Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Ireland and Singapore! Due to the language barrier, it was funny to translate some words you might know only in your mother tongue, or objects you might imagine but do not associate the word in any language!
BrainSpin is fun, useful and reminds you that everyone sees it differently.
It is mainly used as an ice breaker to kick off a new class, meeting or with friends. Also, it is a useful tool to create and co-create with clients and within teams for brainstorming and research with different stakeholders. For others, it can be handy when you are stuck on a project!
